BIMBO, apart from being an extremely contrived acronym, is a computer program which, roughly speaking, reads the web so that you don't have to. It gathers links from a set of sources -- mainly, web logs and news pages -- and invites a group of moderators -- the oligarchy of the title -- to vote on whether or not they are interesting. The links which receive an overall positive score are displayed on the links page, which also links to the list of sources.
Have a read. Maybe you'll agree with our judgement; maybe you won't. If you really disagree, you can always look at the links we didn't like.
(In the interests of transparency, you can see the list of link sources and rules used by BIMBO.)
There is no formal application procedure. Under normal circumstances, the oligarchy would contact you, and not the other way round. But maybe you should email me anyway, if you think you would make a good moderator.
(You may be reading this because you've seen a web server log entry directing you to this page.) BIMBO uses a trivial web client which reads a set of source pages, and then gathers information from the links on them. It oughtn't to place any significant load on a web server. In the unlikely event that it is causing any problems, please contact me.
Once the links are gathered, they are emailed out to the moderators, who use a simple web interface to vote on the stories.
Copyright (c) 2002 Mythic Beasts Ltd., Chris Lightfoot. All rights reserved.